After
by finnicko-loves-anniec
Summary: Warning: contains spoilers for Mockingjay. After returning home to District Twelve after the war, Katniss feels empty. Her grief for Prim consumes her, leaving Katniss helpless. Haymitch cares for her, hoping that he can someday bring back the girl he mentored.


A/N: Hi everybody! This oneshot shows Katniss after Coin's execution while Haymitch cares for her. There will not be any Hayniss romance, just some hurt/comfort. I suppose this will count as an AU because of the events in Mockingjay's epilogue, but otherwise it should agree with the books. The T rating is for Katniss's emotional state, Haymitch's drinking, and both of their language.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games. However, if Suzanne Collins ever wanted to give it away, I'd be more than happy to take it off her hands.

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Katniss sat in fetal position with her hands over her ears at the foot of her bed. This was how she had spent the last several weeks, shaking and crying a little bit, but mostly just sitting and hoping she would soon wake up from this nightmare. She only moved when Haymitch forced her to bathe, eat, or use the restroom.

When her father had died, Katniss had thought her mother weak for forgetting to live. Now, it seemed that Eileen Everdeen had simply been smarter than her daughter. Living hurt. Existing in the gray area between life and death was numbing. If Katniss wasn't really alive, she did not have to feel the ache that had plagued her since Prim's death. Killing Coin had not helped. It should have been satisfying to take the life of the woman who had stolen Prim from her, but she had still felt empty. The nothingness of the last nine weeks had been welcome after that pain. If this was what almost-death felt like, Katniss couldn't wait to actually be dead.

Haymitch entered her room without knocking. "Time to get up sweetheart. We've got stuff to do today." He waited for a moment to see if she would get up by herself, then grabbed her under the arms and hoisted her up. "Let's go." He guided her into the bathroom, where he helped her undress and step into the shower, just like every other day.

Then he closed the curtain. That was different. Usually, Haymitch would wash her. Today, he stood outside and waited for Katniss to finish. She stood in the shower for a few minutes, confused. "Come on sweetheart, I know you've done this before. It would explain the smell though." The old Katniss would have had a response to that. The new Katniss just turned on the water. When she was done, she shut off the water and opened the curtain to find Haymitch gone. She dried herself off with the towel he had left for her, and then got dressed in the clothes placed neatly by the sink. A few minutes later, Haymitch reappeared. "I thought you could do it. Ready for some breakfast?"

The rest of the day went as it usually did. Katniss sat and thought. Haymitch fixed lunch and dinner and ensured that she ate a few bites of each. She slept, nightmares of Cinna, Finnick, and Prim haunting her dreams.

The next day, Haymitch again made her shower herself. He also watched as she brushed her hair. Haymitch had done his best over the last two months to make sure that Katniss was taken care of, and though he'd tried every day to brush her hair, it was still a mess of knots. Katniss supposed she should not be surprised. After all, Haymitch had never been known for his personal hygiene. Once she had untangled her hair, Haymitch cooked dinner for both of them.

Time passed. Every day or two, Haymitch would have Katniss do another task, and she slowly became less dependent on him. She also had less time to sit and think. Part of Katniss felt guilty that she was starting to reclaim her life, while so many of her friends would never have the chance. The other, stronger part of her realized that Prim wouldn't want her to be miserable for the rest of her life. She remembered how betrayed she had felt when her mother sank into herself after her father's death. She could not do the same to Haymitch. He was all she had left.

Neither of her friends from Twelve had returned after the war. Gale was in District Two building weapons so monsters like Coin could kill more innocent children. Peeta had chosen to remain in the Capitol, helping to smooth tensions between the factions of the emerging government. Katniss had no such lofty goals. Instead, she focused on just rebuilding the woman she had once been. She was making slow progress, but she could feel herself coming out of the numbness that had surrounded her for weeks.

Now that he no longer had to spend all his time caring for Katniss, Haymitch had taken to raising geese. His little flock roamed the Victors Village freely, often wandering far away from the house. Haymitch would stumble around drunkenly, searching for them for hours so that he could put them into the little hut he had built for them at night. He would often swear to fence in an area, but never did. Katniss suspected that he enjoyed hunting for them, that the daily game of hide and go seek was a welcome distraction for a man that had been alone for so long. She also thought that staying busy probably warded away some of the ghosts that had haunted him for so long. Haymitch still drank too much, but he did try to cut back. After years of abuse, alcohol was now a physical necessity for Haymitch, not a way to avoid the deaths of his family. She had asked him about it once.

"Haymitch?"

"Sweetheart?"

"Why are you drinking so much less recently?"

Haymitch had brushed her question off. "I'm not drunk enough to deal with this right now." He had left then, and finished off his bottle that night. They had not talked about it again.

A few weeks after Haymitch took in the geese, Katniss asked if she could help him with them. "Sure, sweetheart, if you think you can handle the feisty little fuckers," Haymitch had replied. She became his apprentice, helping him feed the geese, clean the coop, and hunt the little devils down at night.

One day, a particularly adventurous gander had found its way underneath the steps leading up to one of the other houses in the Victor's Village. Katniss had never noticed that one of the stones was missing, but sure enough, there was a hole just big enough for a goose to squeeze inside. After finding that the hole was too small to allow anything but her head and arms inside the opening, Katniss tried to lure the gander closer to her by staying perfectly still. She figured that if it moved only a foot or two closer, she would be able to grab it and put it in the coop.

After close to twenty minutes of glaring at the goose and willing it to move, she gave up any semblance of patience. "Get over here you stupid little shit!" she screamed. "I am so fucking tired of you dumbass birds! I will personally pluck every feather out of your body and roast you and eat you just to ensure that you can never do this again!"

Across the yard, Haymitch smiled as he watched Katniss, with her head and arms still inside the hollow under the stairs, yell abuse at the goose. He was glad to have his girl on fire back.

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A/N: Thanks for reading everyone! I would really appreciate it if you would review - I want to become a better writer, and any suggestions, comments, or critiques are valued!


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